What is abuse?

What is abuse?

Abuse in the home is also called domestic or family violence. It’s when someone is hurting you or treating you badly. The person hurting you could be your husband or partner, your parent or child or another family member. The abuser could also be your carer or someone who shares your house. Any woman, at any age, can experience abuse.

Abuse is not always physical. You may be hurt in other ways. There are different forms of abuse.

Emotional abuse can hurt your mind and your feelings.

It includes when someone:

constantly tells you that you can’t do anything right, that you are stupid

tells you no one else in world could love you.

tells you that no one will let you keep your children if you leave

At first he cooked and pretended that he was being nice. Eventually though I believed that I couldn’t cook for myself because I would “stuff it up”…

Read more from “A story about ME”

He made me feel without my name on the house title I was a boarder, our son was a boarder. We weren’t allowed to do want we wanted. We weren’t allowed to have cushions on the couch we had to ask permission..

Social abuse can also include making it difficult for you to talk to other people.

‘We have had TTY at home for 10 years but it has never been hooked up. My carers don’t have the necessary communication skills – they can’t sign. My husband wants to be the only one who can communicate with the carers’…

Sexual abuse is when someone makes you do sexual things that you don’t want to do. Forcing you to have sex is a crime, even if you are married.

My husband’s only focus was on sex and this was a big issue for me. I would be asleep and he would just jump on top of me. I could never have talked to him about how I felt, he would just start abusing me, he would put me down. Back then I was very quiet, I wouldn’t have said ‘Boo’ to a goose, I was his puppet’…

The views or opinions expressed in websites linked to this site, or in articles not specifically written by the Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria do not necessarily reflect the views of the organisation.